"When we had an unstable environmental situation it was very hard to negotiate with other museums that expect you to maintain a type of standard," said Jill Meredith, director of the Mead Art Museum. "Now we are able to do that because we have met or exceeded the professional standard."
Along with the renovations, the College has acquired a collection of works by female Russian artists from the collection of Thomas Whitney '37, who has also donated items to the Center for Russian Culture at the College. Many of the more than 400 works donated will be on display when the museum opens.
According to President Tom Gerety, Whitney's gift might be the most valuable gift ever given to the College, depending on how the artwork is valued.
Mead's galleries have been given new lighting systems, flooring and wall surfaces and its basement level has been adapted and furnished for professional art preparation and art storage. A $50,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services provided partial support for the state-of-the-art compact storage systems.
Mead houses a collection of 14,000 works, which have been acquired by the College since 1839, although most of the pieces are in storage.
"The new system is much safer for the works," said Meredith. "We have a stable environment which we did not have before. It is always at 30 degrees, 50 percent humidity, which was very hard to maintain in the extreme New England summers and winters. The museum previously had no insulation, and it was not cost effective to rip the brick off, put insulation in and put the brick back on."
Instead, the engineers designed a wall that is built out six inches so it acts like an air bucket, preventing the paintings from accumulating condensation.
Also improved is the museum's security system, using a system with 30-second-delay doors, regularly alarmed doors, the ability to secure specific areas of the museum and a new training program for the student guards. This new system strictly follows all the accredited rules of museum security, according to Meredith.
"There are certain restrictions other museums have before they allow us to take their things, so this should prove to be beneficial to us getting new shows," said Donna Abelli, the museum's administrative assistant.
The College's permanent collection is now housed in themed galleries, including a hall displaying recent acquisitions, a room of 20th century art and a gallery of late 18th and 19th century art. The 18th and 19th century rooms are shown as a "salon hang," allowing works of different scale and size to be displayed, including the original sketches alongside the finished product, which is important for Amherst as a teaching institution, according to Meredith.
The gallery containing European work from the Renaissance to the late 19th century includes works by Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Peter Paul Rubens. There is also a gallery of African art, a collection which is internationally renowned, according to Meredith.
A "teaching gallery," which provides space in which to show a collection or slides, has also been added.
There are two inaugural shows that will be in the main gallery space on opening day. The first is a collection of pieces from Whitney's donation in an exhibit titled, "The World Opened Wide: 20th Century Russian Women Artists from the Collection of Thomas P. Whitney '37."
"This altered the collection in many ways. It was part of a larger collection of about 400 works that span the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century," said Meredith, who co-curated the exhibit. "The artists featured used avant-garde forms, Cubist-Futurism, Neo Primitivism, Constructivism and Suprematism, theatrical designs and what is referred to as trans-rational poetry. The collection demonstrates the quality and range of the work produced at the time."
Ten years ago, Whitney donated rare books and manuscripts to the College, and helped create the Center for Russian Culture. "This [new] gift, in a way, completes a transfer of his collection," said Professor of Russian Stanley Rabinowitz. "We have now, perhaps, the largest collection of Russian art in the country."
"He wanted his art to join everything else he gave to the College ten years ago," Rabinowitz added. "There's plenty of art, so we'll never finish exhibiting it."
The second of the inaugural shows features the work of Emmet Gowin, a professor of photography at Princeton University, who will be speaking at the College on Friday. The works range from the 1950s to the late 1990s. Many of his photographs are of his wife.
"[Edith] is representative of the notion of intimate relations, women and family life in a more general fashion," said Meredith.
The second set of themes are landscapes and aerial photography that Gowin began in the 1980s when he was working on a project after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens.
"Over a period of about 15 years he has been very interested in agricultural photography that shows the impact of human activity on the earth; they are geometric, bio-morphic and almost cosmic images," added Meredith.